Employers admit that legacy insurance carriers deliver poor service and do nothing to control escalating healthcare costs. Yet they stick with the status quo, insisting that changing plans is too hard for employees. Paradoxically, this inertia carries high costs and multiple risks for plan members.
Financial distress is one of the most negative results of staying with an underperforming employee health plan. Year after year, such plans impact employee finances by reducing benefits and redirecting their wealth into ever-higher payroll contributions, deductibles, and out-of-pocket expenses.
Studies show that shifting rising healthcare costs onto employees has outpaced wage and cost-of-living increases, effectively reducing or stagnating wages and increasing income disparities. Forward-looking employers know that by making health benefits more affordable, they can improve employee satisfaction and financial security and stay competitive in a tight labor market.
Members are further harmed when legacy health plans routinely deny claims and limit patient access to network-gated providers, services, and procedures. As a result, employees are exposed to (and often liable for) high-cost, out-of-network claims that can be financially devastating.
Consider this $97,000 surprise bill for transporting an infant from a local ER to a regional hospital for life-saving treatment. Although doctors determined the transfer was the child’s best chance for survival, using the air ambulance was deemed “not medically necessary.” Coverage and multiple appeals were denied, and resolution is still outstanding.
Plan sponsors should consider how situations like this can negatively affect employees and take decisive steps to reduce the spiraling costs and uncovered claims inherent in legacy insurance plans. Perceived challenges in moving to a new and modern health plan are often overblown, especially when the change results in better benefits, lower costs, and less financial risk.
Employees are not as fragile and incapable of adapting to change as employers make them out to be. Using employees as human shields to excuse the status quo increases employee harm and risk and exposes employer plan sponsor fiduciaries to liability.
Like it or not, employers are in the business of healthcare. As with other business improvements, successful leaders advocate for change and have confidence that their employees will recognize and embrace the benefits of a member-focused health plan.
